Network Shell, commonly known as Netsh, is a command-line tool in Windows that allows administrators to configure and manage various networking components, such as network interfaces, IP addresses, DNS servers, and more. It is included in all modern versions of Windows and can be accessed through the Command Prompt or PowerShell.
Netsh is a command-line tool used to manage and troubleshoot network configurations on Windows. It can also monitor network traffic by capturing packets and displaying statistics.
How to Access the Network Shell
In Windows, we can access netsh using the Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell.
Open Command Prompt with administrative privileges. Click on the Start menu, type cmd, right-click on Command Prompt, and select "Run as administrator."
In the command prompt, you can open the network shell by running the command:
netsh
This should open the netsh prompt and allow you to configure networks:
netsh>
Netsh Monitor Network Traffic
To start monitoring network traffic in the netsh utility, run the command below:
netsh> trace start capture=yes
Press Enter. This will start capturing network traffic.
Example command output:
Trace configuration:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Status: Running
Trace File: C:\Users\csalem\AppData\Local\Temp\NetTraces\NetTrace.etl
Append: Off
Circular: On
Max Size: 512 MB
Report: Off
Wait for some time to capture enough traffic, and then run the command:
netsh> trace stop
This will stop the capture.
Example output:
Merging traces ... done
Generating data collection ... done
The trace file and additional troubleshooting information have been compiled as "C:\Users\csalem\AppData\Local\Temp\NetTraces\NetTrace.cab".
File location = C:\Users\csalem\AppData\Local\Temp\NetTraces\NetTrace.etl
Tracing session was successfully stopped.
Convert ETL File to Wireshark Capture
In order to read and analyze the captured traffic, we need to convert the etl file to a .cap file as shown in the command below:
trace dump tracefile.etl -o capture.pcap
You can now open the capture.pcap file in Wireshark or other network analysis tool to view the network traffic.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you learned how you can use the Windows netsh utility to capture network traffic and export it to an external file for later use.
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